DOUBLE PLAY: Two dramas from emerging playwright A. Rey Pamatmat are getting a run in Boston

By R. Scott Reedy/Daily News Correspondent

Friday

May 22, 2015 at 3:59 PMMay 26, 2015 at 3:55 PM

On the telephone from Boston last week, playwright A. Rey Pamatmat was tired but still eager to talk about the not one, but two shows – the Huntington Theatre Company production of “after all the terrible things I do” and Company One’s mounting of “Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them” – he’ll soon have running simultaneously at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts.

“We had a tech rehearsal yesterday and it was a 19-hour day,” explained Pamatmat of the run-up to “after all the terrible things I do,” now in previews, and “Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them,” which begins performances June 4. “Company One had been thinking of producing ‘Edith’ for some time and had already delayed it for 18 months. When they learned of the Huntington’s plans, they put it off another six months so that the two plays could coincide. It’s exciting to have two plays up at once, but it’s also daunting.”

And while two Boston theater companies are presenting them at the same time, in the same complex, the plays are not companion pieces, according to Pamatmat.

“They deal with very separate worlds – ‘Edith,’ about a brother and sister being abandoned on a non-working farm, makes the most sense if you can see the world through the point of view of the kids. It asks the audience to be earnest. I wrote ‘terrible things,’ which is about a bookstore owner and her employee who discover their pasts are linked, and the ramifications of bullying, about two and a half years later. It asks that people question things that they think they know.”

In “after all the terrible things I do,” a recent college graduate, Daniel, returns home to begin the next phase of his life and complete his first novel. His passion for the work of poet Frank O’Hara leads Daniel to write about O’Hara’s real-life romance with his male roommate and also to share his own life experiences. Feeling a strong connection to Daniel during his job interview, Filipina bookstore owner Linda hires him for an entry-level position. The pair soon realize their lives have intertwined in some significant and unexpected ways.

“In our society, we tend to talk a lot about the victims of bullying, but not the bullies. In the play, we see that both Daniel and Linda have experience with anti-LGBT bullying, but not in the ways you might expect. I don’t want to give away too many plot points, because there are a lot of twists in the story,” says the Filipino-American who grew up in rural Michigan and went on to earn a BFA from New York University and a MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama. “What really surprised me while we were doing the world premiere of this play at Milwaukee Rep last fall was the realization that we have so devalued kindness and compassion in this country. Now, we don’t want cooperation – whether it’s between the political parties in Congress or between us and other nations – we want dominance.”

“Because I was writing about difficult topics that can make people uncomfortable, I decided it should be set where I am comfortable. When I was an undergraduate, I worked in a bookstore and I was very happy there. I also put in Frank O’Hara, because I love his poems. I even based the title of the play on his ‘I do this, I do that’ poems, which he wrote on his lunch break at MoMA (New York’s Museum of Modern Art).”

The 39-year-old Pamatmat – who says he decided to write “after all the terrible things I do” after a rash of anti-LGBT bullying was linked to three suicides – acknowledges that his own childhood years were good ones, even if he didn’t realize it at the time.

“I grew up on a non-working farm near Port Huron. It was a very isolated area and I hated it. I could not wait to get to New York and NYU. I know now that the isolation had an upside. I didn’t have any personal experience with bullying. I came out as gay in the early 1990s, when I was in high school, without anyone ever telling me to shut up.”

When he concludes his busy Boston visit, the resident of Sunnyside, Queens, may need some rest, but he will instead return home and get right back to work.

“June is going to be exhausting. I’ll be here for rehearsals and the first week of performances of both plays and then I have to get back to New York for a workshop of my new play which is about siblings in their 30s who have to face their parents’ mortality.”

Before he leaves, however, Pamatmat has some advice for theatergoers who may want to make a double feature of his two Boston productions.

“The plays are so different that people who decide to see both in one day should probably take a dinner break in between. It’s definitely best to approach each one with a clean slate and an open mind.”

“after all the terrible things I do” runs through June 21 at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, 527 Tremont St., Boston. Tickets start at $25. Call 617-266-0800 or go online at huntingtontheatre.org.

“Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them” runs June 4 – 27, also at the Calderwood. Tickets start at $15. Call 617-933-8600 or visit companyone.org.

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